Boingo Targeting The Carrier Market
People at Boingo are beginning to realize that individuals aren’t rushing out to sign up for their overly expensive commercial WiFi hotspot offerings, and so they’re shopping around for a new business model. They seem to be going from bad (build it and they will come) to worse: they want to rebrand their offering for carriers. First off, the market becomes limited very quickly since there are only 6 major wireless carriers in the US. T-Mobile already hsa their own hotspot offerings, so it’s unclear why they’d be interested in Boingo’s service. Second, it doesn’t do anything to encourage more end-users to use the services. In fact, it’s likely to become worse, because they’ve just added yet another player who needs to take a cut. On a typical offering under this set up, the carrier, Boingo, whoever set up the hotspot, and the business owner of the hotspot all need to take their cut. Considering that very few people seem willing to pay even small amounts for WiFi access, you’re not talking about a hugely profitable business here.
